Preparing for The Worst

If you know you're the ocean you aren't afraid of the waves.
Otherwise, you're seasick all the time.

BEING A NERVOUS WRECK who is always worried about the next bad thing that will happen, the last thing I need is hyperbole. But it's all around me: The biggest this, the worst that, the most fill-in-the-blank. This morning the newspaper reported that the recent Academy Awards show was "the least watched Oscar presentation of all time." So what? Is this bad news or good news? More to the point, is this news at all?

I'm on this subject because there's a huge storm coming my way and it's freaking me out! To be more accurate, the people who report the weather are freaking me out about it. I know they get paid to do that so you'd think I'd be able to to see through the hype and remain somewhat calm. But it's hard when they not only say it will snow -- a lot-- but that there will be power outages and breaking tree limbs and dangerously high winds and ice and possible loss of life. Jesus, is all that hyperbole really necessary?

As usual my husband has gone off somewhere in search of money and will not return until it's all over. Hoping to lessen my anxiety, I turned to one of my most effective drugs, a podcast by the Buddhist teacher Tara Brach on the subject of how to find equanimity. First I had to look up the word since I had never heard it. Turns out it means, "Mental calmness, composure and evenness of temper, especially in a difficult situation." Ha! (I had to laugh when I found the definition; of course I didn't know the word since it's never applied to me.)

The best take-away from Tara's talk was a poem she recited in an abridged form. I Googled it and share the original in its entirety here, hoping it helps a few of you weather whatever storms you are currently facing.

Now we’re ready to look at something pretty special.
It is a duck, riding the ocean a hundred feet beyond the surf.
No, it isn’t a gull; a gull always has a raucous touch about him.
This is some sort of duck, and he cuddles in the swells.
He isn’t cold, and he is thinking things over.
 
There is a big heaving in the Atlantic, and he is a part of it.
He looks a bit like a mandarin,
or the Lord Buddha meditating under the Bo tree.
But he has hardly enough above the eyes to be a philosopher.
He has poise, however, which is what philosophers must have.

He can rest while the Atlantic heaves, because he rests in the Atlantic.
Probably he doesn’t know how large the ocean is.
And neither do you.
But he realizes it.
And what does he do, I ask you?
He sits down in it!
He reposes in the immediate as if it were infinity – which it is.
He has made himself a part of the boundless
by easing himself into just where it touches him.

I like the duck.
He doesn’t know much, but he’s got religion.

--"The Little Duck" by Donald Babcock, originally printed in The New Yorker, 1947